Beaglebone Black FM/Internet Radio Combo Receiver using an RTL-SDR

Last year we missed this interesting project by Frederick Vandenbosch where he created a FM/internet radio combination receiver using a BeagleBone Black mini embedded PC and an RTL-SDR dongle.

The idea is that the system will receive FM radio through the RTL-SDR normally, but when reception is poor or unavailable you can switch to internet radio which is received through WiFi. The radio is controlled through an LCD screen attached to the BeagleBone Black.

Frederick used Linux on the BeagleBone and created a custom GUI that allows for easy tuning using rtl_fm as the RTL-SDR back end, setting channel presets and for switching between internet and live FM radio.